The Bitter Beginning
by TheVelvetDusk
Summary: "The world has changed, and God have they ever changed with it, but there's no easy way to sync themselves to those differences, no reset button for their brains." [lyatt oneshot, slightly influenced by movie rumor rumblings, but mostly just standard post-2x10 drivel]


_AUTHORS NOTE, HELLO: After several failed attempts to muster anything even slightly fic-worthy for quite a while, this rando oneshot literally came flying out of me without warning this week. It does borrow from some minor movie-related ideas (mostly based off of promo pics and interviews), but only vaguely. I suspect there might be some time lapse in the movie (like HOW does Lucy supposedly acquire a certain piece of jewelry without a hop forward?!), and this is my filler for part of that in-between phase. Or whatever. I don't pretend to understand how this is all coming together in the movie, BUT I AM READY FOR IT._

 _Reviews would be lovely, I'm a needy soul ;)_

* * *

It's been less than twenty-four hours of freedom and she's already on his doorstep. There's a staleness in the air, a musty museum-type rot that she knows too well. He's got every window cranked open, chilly outside air pouring through the apartment, but it's not enough to alleviate the pervading sense of walking straight into a tomb.

She spots a photo of Jessica in ten seconds flat, and that tomb-like impression multiplies.

He follows her gaze and cringes immediately. "Sorry. I should've — "

"No," she cuts in quickly. "Don't be ridiculous. It was different...when you lived here, I mean. Obviously."

"Yeah," Wyatt agrees stiffly, ragged tension marking his posture. He kicks at the leg of a dusty end table, blinking in slow repeated strokes. "I know this is the understatement of the century, but that feels like a whole different lifetime. Me, this apartment...all of it."

It actually _was_ a whole different lifetime, or at least a different timeline, but to even begin down that road seems unbelievably foolish right now. For the first time since Lucy was ushered through the doors of Mason Industries and deposited into that sterile waiting room with Mr. No Ma'am, there isn't an urgent time-related matter that requires them to spin off into that sort of tangent. That's in the past now. The actual past. One they can't tamper with anymore; one that can't tamper with them, either.

If there's a version of _them_ that's even survived the last two years of tampering.

Wyatt has been watching her this whole time, musing silently while she's been off on her own mental field trip, examining her with renewed focus. A focus that carries her off into another era altogether.

"Let's get out of here."

"But — " she gestures emptily at the room around her, a room she's seeing for the first time in spite of how intimately she knows the man who leases it, "— but you said you wanted help."

"Screw it. What's another day of cobwebs, right? It's only been like this for a damn eternity already."

It doesn't feel safe to leave. It doesn't feel safe to stay. The difference is all in which type of danger she prefers.

He tilts his head, that damn dimpled charm coming out in full force as he ambles closer. "C'mon. I used to live off of takeout from the Thai place down the street. You can't say no to Thai."

Her mouth waters at the very mention of it. Thai food has become a remarkable delicacy after going so long without it. "You're right, there's no way I'm turning that down."

But a brisk jaunt down the block reveals that the restaurant is gone, replaced by a vape shop with a name so cheesy, Lucy can't help but laugh. "I've always wanted to know what red curry would taste like at — at _Planet of the Vapes_."

Wyatt remains eerily stoic, staring vacantly ahead as if he hasn't heard her.

"Hey, it's — I'm sorry, but we can get Thai somewhere else, right? This is San Francisco. It's not like — "

"Yeah." The word comes out as more of a cough, but when he turns to her, he's completely at ease again. "Suggestions? Or should we just Google something since...that's bound to be more reliable, right?"

More reliable than their transplanted memories of an extinct city.

Lucy nods, already digging her phone out of her coat pocket. There's no telling what else is different, gone, torn down, replaced. What's somehow worse is the realization that there's also no way of knowing the _why_. They've been off the grid for so long, which means it's just as likely that businesses have failed or moved or...or something that's not related to the death and destruction they've caused across countless decades.

The weight of not knowing settles over her, a tangible heaviness that seems to nip at Wyatt's mood too. The world has changed, and God have they ever changed with it, but there's no easy way to sync themselves to those differences, no reset button for their brains.

When they finally get seated elsewhere, Lucy finds consolation in one wonderfully consistent fact that hasn't been shaken — Thai food still dissolves across her tongue like spice-infused ecstasy.

Wyatt smirks from across the table, and his suggestive expression immediately brings her noisy lip-smacking fervor in check. Embarrassment climbs up her neck as she swallows a piece of shrimp. "Sorry."

There's a brazen flick of his eyebrows as he leans forward confidentially. "Don't quit on my account."

They eat in relative silence from that point, Lucy doing her damnedest to not carry on like a pig in slop. Or like a woman deprived of anything resembling decent food for almost an entire year.

It startles her to acknowledge how much of her life she's actually lost to the war that now lies behind them, even when she's reflecting on something as trivial as the meals she's missed.

The bill is paid, and the vacuum where her usual sense of purpose lives has returned. She's pretty sure Wyatt didn't even want her help with cleaning his apartment. He just didn't want to be alone.

Neither does she.

Funny how months and months of craving her own space has left her here, incapable of knowing what do with it now that it's all hers. A whole house, in fact. No mother. No sister. Just Lucy, free to purge and organize and — and sell. Probably. No, definitely. She has to sell that goddamn crypt. The sooner the better.

Wyatt drives aimlessly for a while, and Lucy nearly cries at how right that feels. It's implicit, this wish to be rootless for a little longer, a shared need that doesn't require debate. When he does eventually come to a stop in front of her house, she's shocked to see the late hour that's reflecting over his dashboard.

"Is it...creepy?" he asks with a careful edge to his voice. "That big house, just you...alone?"

It shouldn't be. It's been her home for years, a crash landing between dorm rooms and apartments, then a permanent fixture again when her mom's diagnosis had advanced so rapidly. She's often seen it as a haven, sometimes a prison, but always — _always_ — a place Lucy thought she'd belonged.

"No. Yes."

"Which is it?"

She shrugs loosely. He doesn't let her off the hook, though, not until honesty pierces her lungs. "Yes. It's creepy."

Next thing she knows, he's walking through the front door with her.

* * *

They don't sleep together. Not in any sense. At least not on that first night.

Lucy can't stomach the idea of making up Amy's bed for anyone else, not even him. She doesn't even entertain the idea of using the master bedroom...that's a level of fucked up she can't begin to discuss out loud. Her own bed is ancient, which means it's minuscule and ridiculous, but —

Wyatt, oblivious to the rattling force of her quickly unspooling thoughts, shrugs off his jacket and tosses it over the sofa. "I'll just camp out here, if that's cool with you."

Not in her room, not even upstairs. Layers upon layers of wood and plaster and insulation will wall him off from her.

"Yeah, that's fine."

"Cool."

Why the hell does he keep saying "cool" in that weirdly unaffected tone? When has he ever said cool two times in less than a minute?

Deep down, Lucy is painfully aware that she's the only one who's not being cool.

Even deeper down, she remembers how desperately Wyatt sometimes pretends to be cool when he's actually damn near feverish.

Despite the confusion of whatever this night means — the way they can't seem to part company, how they're together but not _together_ , his broad-shouldered presence in a house that's suddenly suffocatingly narrow — the effect is undeniable. She sinks into a cozy pajama set that makes her heart ache with familiarity, then proceeds to wash her face, tie her hair up, and slides between her old sheets without any event. No jumping at long shadows, no terror at the gentle creak of the walls as they settle in for the night. Her sleep is far from sound or dreamless, but it's not even half as bad as what she'd expected. With Wyatt here — not even in sight, just _here_ — she's not afraid. It's a simple fact that's surprisingly never wavered.

They cook in the morning. Well, he cooks. She hands him things. With the crunch of hot bacon breaking between her teeth, Lucy wonder if this is it — if they'll really stay like this. That every day could begin and end with him, their lives expanding and contracting around each other as the unknown — or what she hopes is still unknown _,_ anyway — future unfolds before them.

But she's snapped out of that luring cocoon before the morning is even spent. He gets a call, his jaw clenches, and the conversation carries him off to another room, leaving her with little else but the echo of every pacing step that thuds across the wood floor.

Sir. That's the one ominous word she keeps catching, peppered through almost every sentence Wyatt utters. _Sir_. She's suddenly homesick for the alternative of "ma'am."

His responses trail off after a few minutes, then end altogether. Lucy waits, barely daring to breathe, but his shuffling return halts abruptly when the phone begins to chime a second time.

More of the same, but there are directions involved this time, places and times that Wyatt is dutifully repeating in despondent monotone.

She doesn't make him do the hard part. He reappears in the kitchen after hanging up, all grim and drawn and apologetic, but Lucy slices right to the point as if it was nothing more than the cooling pancake on her plate.

"When?"

* * *

He hasn't been reassigned. Not yet. But he's also not as terrifyingly free as she is.

Lucy doesn't enjoy the thought that freedom now scares the shit out of her. She'd rather not know when that shift happened, even though she has a pretty good idea that there's no exact pinpoint for that landmark. Somewhere between her mother's boot camp from hell and sharing a common bathroom with Wyatt's wife, if she had to guess.

His routine is erratic. Pendleton for a few days, her mother's couch for two nights. Back to Pendleton again for more meetings, or evaluations, or — or something. He doesn't talk much about why he leaves, but then again, they don't really talk much at all. They mostly just coexist. She wonders if it should bother her more, this weird arrangement they have going, but she can't bring herself to care. When he's around, something inside of her is validated. She doesn't fear that her entire stint in that shitty bunker was a horrific fever dream. Or worse, that _everything else_ has been a fever dream, that one morning she'll wake up in the bunker again, damned to never escape this time.

He gets it, which means she doesn't have to pretend that the silent pain lurking just beneath the surface isn't always, always there.

Then Wyatt leaves again, this time with the warning that he probably won't be back for a few weeks. Lucy is so focused on not overreacting to that announcement that she doesn't really process it at all. It's not until week two is dragging by — at what must be slower than a snail's pace, for God's sake — that she begins to ask all the questions she'd bottled up while he was still around.

Is she allowed to contact him? She's already sent a stray text or two, but he hasn't replied. Should she read into that, or is it standard protocol for him to be cut off from his phone?

And the word _few_. What is a few weeks? Would he have been specific enough to say "couple" if it was only a two week absence? Will it be three? Four? If it's more than four, that's a whole month, which means _a few weeks_ is no longer an accurate descriptor, right? Because then he would have said he'd be gone for a month. Why say "weeks" when it's actually long enough to qualify for a whole other word?

She doesn't even know if this is a real assignment, or just other — other stuff. Training, or whatever. She tries to imagine Wyatt running through tires or crawling beneath barbed wire obstacles. Drills. That's what those exercises are called, right?

She spends an awful rainy afternoon scouring the internet, searching various combinations of Master Sergeant and Delta Force, skimming articles on unconventional warfare assignments for hours on end. Her eyes hurt and her back aches but she can't move, can't look away.

Her third call from the head of the History Department rings through early the next morning, and for the first time, Lucy actually scrambles to answer it. Left alone, even goddamn Stanford is preferable to poking around the miserable ruins of this house. Rufus and Jiya still have day jobs, if that's what you call the act of rebuilding an entire technological empire with one of the most famous geniuses on the planet. They can't save her from her languishing patheticness. Hell, not even Wyatt could _really_ save her from that. At best, he was a natural enabler. Or at least that was how he tended to operate now that their asses weren't on the line every day. Either way, Lucy wasn't allowing herself to mope around indefinitely.

But Stanford…? Oh God, why did she think _Stanford_ was a good idea?

Day one, and she was already inundated with well wishes from every stuffy, balding, boisterous ass on payroll, all of them extolling her mother's life work like she'd been Joan of freaking Arc. To add to the fun, her first faculty meeting confirms that the fight for tenure is now even farther out of reach than the last time she'd pressed the issue. Fucking Jonas.

She'd honestly forgotten he even existed. It was a lot to responsibility, keeping track of a pathetically short-lived office romance with that asshole when she'd also been saddled with a fake Rittenhouse fiancé, flirted with Robert Todd Lincoln and Ian Fleming, fallen in love with one grief-ridden widow, been foretold a miserably failed relationship with a _different_ grief-ridden widow… And honestly had her heart broken by both of them in one way or another.

Yeah, safe to say that Jonas was an insignificant speck on the campy soap opera drama that was her life these days. Too bad he'd never allow the word "insignificant" to get within fifty feet of his ego.

"Lucy! Lucy, hey wait up!"

So it wasn't enough to be ogled for the better part of an hour over a shiny walnut conference table. He planned to add words to that hangdog stare. Fantastic.

"I have to go," she explains hurriedly, hooking a thumb over her shoulder to point at literally nothing. "Sorry, another time…"

"It's just— " he pauses, seemingly flustered at her nonchalance, " — it's like you just... _evaporated_ or something, and now you're— "

"Oh, that. I'm not really allowed to talk about it. Sorry."

Non-disclosure is suddenly her hero, her knight in shining armor. It has never been more satisfying to sound aloof and important as it does right now.

His face falls further. "I can't tempt you? I thought you might want to catch up over drinks, or we could do dinner at Park — "

"Sorry," Lucy says again, meaning it less and less every time it comes out of her mouth. "I have a lot going on right now, and...well, don't you think it's better to keep our relationship strictly professional at this point? Mixing our work lives with our social lives…? Not our best idea."

She should be wincing at how easily she's lying to his face — because she actually has _nothing_ going on in her life right now, other than coping with the strange feeling of being stationary for so many days in a row — but that's not the cause of her inward grimace. The song and dance of letting Jonas down easy is coming too readily. The lines, the excuses…

They sound like they're aimed at someone who stands a little closer to eye-level, someone with carelessly rumpled hair, a broader silhouette, a gaze that's bluer than the ocean.

Dammit, she really does need to stop mixing work with her social life, doesn't she?

That thought saps whatever energy she has left to give. She pats slack-jawed Jonas on the arm like the overgrown prep school boy that he is, murmuring a weak, "See you around," then leaves him gaping at her on the walkway.

She needs alcohol and she needs it now.

* * *

Wyatt doesn't return her calls. He doesn't send a damn text. There's no warning. He just shows up out of nowhere, teeth gleaming in a smile so wide, he might as well be auditioning for a Crest commercial.

"Did you miss me?"

Lucy almost swings an enraged fist at his model-perfect face, because he knows the answer and he's being too stupidly smug about it.

That impulse passes. Instead, she finds herself crumpling into his chest and blinking emphatically until all potential tears have been fully banished. His arms crush her to him, blanketing her against the cold of the still-open doorway, his bristly cheek imprinting hers. She bites her lip and resists the urge to berate him for never checking in, for not being more clear about where he'd gone or how long he'd be there. What's the point now? He's here, isn't he? He's safe. He's back.

Wyatt gets the door latched behind him, negotiating enough space between them to cup her face in his hands. This is — they don't usually —

The last time he held her face like that, it was to kiss her. Thoroughly. And he's looking at her like he wants to do a hell of a lot more than coexist. She's hot and cold all over, somehow sure and unsure at the same time. Lucy watches in awe as he tries to subdue the emotions welling in his eyes, but he's never been great at finding the off-switch, not even when it's a matter of national security.

The silence is warped with unspeakable strain. Wyatt comes to a decision at last, fingers slowly peeling away from her skin.

She makes a decision too. Or rather, her body makes one for her.

Her hands wrap soundly around his wrists, impeding his retreat. She breathes audibly — loudly, in fact — against his mouth.

That's all it takes to unclip him from his leash of hesitation. He guides her lips to his, so smooth and sure, and she has trouble withholding her startled gasp. It's different than she expects it to be, a phenomenon that's twisted and tainted and inescapably necessary. He moves with her so softly, agonizingly seductive in the way he slides his mouth to hers again and again, pressing her back against the newel post at the base of the stairs until she actually _has_ to gasp. Not in shock, but in need. If she doesn't reclaim her breath now, she might lose consciousness.

He exhales just as wildly, extricating one hand from her grasp so he can hook it around her waist instead. "Are we chalking this up to mere insanity, or…?"

The question dangles purposefully. He's keeping his voice light, but the look on his face paints a much darker picture. That's where this kiss diverges so sharply from their last one. She feels the scales tipping straight to the bitter end of sweet.

The bitter end. She used to wonder if that would be the day when she'd finally learn to wean herself off of Wyatt Logan — only when they were at the bitter, bitter end.

Which, presumably, is now. Ha.

Lucy doesn't answer him. It is insanity, after all, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. She takes that hand at her hip and folds it into her own, then leads him up the stairs.

There will be no layers between them tonight. No plaster. No insulation.

No clothing.

Nothing.

He rocks into her with a hoarse grunt, too impatient to bother with peeling back the quilt, barely even getting his jeans kicked off of his ankles. The bed is too small. Childhood trinkets seem to glare down at her from their self-righteous perches around the room. For one fleeting, disturbed moment, Lucy wonders how her mother would have reacted to this entire scenario, and that's weirdly fueling the fire that's already crackling so brightly from between her hips. It's crazy how the thrill of rebellion never used to do anything for her. Now it seems to be her default setting.

She clings to his powerful frame, digging her nails into his skin, rising to meet him again and again until the ceiling upends itself and now she's above him. He grins with sinful satisfaction at the noise he's just driven from her throat. With a ruthless swing of her pelvis, Lucy reminds him that payback is indeed a bitch.

" _Dammit_ , Luce."

She freezes in place, a stubborn strand of hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, every muscle clenched in surprise. " _Luce_?"

Wyatt thumbs that chunk of hair away, coaxing it back behind her ear in a way that wrings her heart with reluctant adoration. "I don't know. Just...came out that way. Can't be any worse than ma'am, right?"

With the excruciatingly perfect friction of his body fused beneath her, heat radiating between them, and a million tangled thoughts and worries woven across her mind, Lucy does the implausible. She laughs.

 _Ma'am_. How the hell does it always come back to that?

Her eyes glitter with unshed tears as she lowers her mouth back down to his. "It's definitely not worse."

* * *

She doesn't get dressed the next day. There's never a chance. He's either on her, in her, or asleep halfway across her. Just when she thinks it might be time to at least find a robe — because the light from the window seems awfully pale again, and Wyatt is nowhere to be found this time as she peers sleepily around the room — a glorious buttery smell wafts through the open door.

Her stomach howls on cue.

"Delivery…"

Wyatt. Naked Wyatt. _Naked Wyatt_ has been naked cooking, and she slept right through it, dammit.

He waltzes in without an ounce of shame, dropping a plate into her lap before Lucy even has herself pushed upright against the headboard. A smile inches over her face as she examines his handiwork with unadulterated amusement. "Grilled cheese?"

His body snuggles in next to hers, crowding himself against her until she's distracted enough to forget that she's practically starving.

"Nothing special, I know, but— "

She traces his lower lip with her thumbnail, head shaking slowly from side to side. "It's special to me. I love grilled cheese sandwiches."

"I know." He kisses her thumb, circles her arm in his grasp, then kisses her wrist too. "There was a phase when that's all you ever wanted."

Lucy lifts a shoulder in meager explanation. "Comfort food."

His mouth wavers minutely before his whole head has dipped against her neck, leaving more kisses there. "Eat. While you still can."

That threat makes her snicker, and his small teasing bite along her shoulder does nothing to bring her laughter back into check. "I'm supposed to be the one who's eating, not you."

Wyatt's voice is nothing but a husky rumble now. "I can't help it. My appetite never quits."

She barely tastes the sandwich in her haste to get it down. If he keeps going like this, she'll run out of calories to burn.

* * *

They're both guilty. Surely he realizes this isn't all on her.

She sees the quick once-over from his side of the table. He doesn't look wounded, not exactly, but he's curious at the very least.

Lucy focuses all of her attention on Jiya. Or she tries to, anyway. Wyatt's been gone for days, and they never...well, there's no precedent, exactly. She doesn't know what sex means for them. Hell, even last time she hadn't really been sure, not right away. And then when it seemed like he felt the same way, that they both wanted to take that step forward…

Jessica Logan had stepped forward out of the grave instead.

So yeah, Lucy's purposely chosen the seat closest to Jiya. She tries to keep her thoughts there, trained on the energetic young woman in front of her, ignoring the sizzle of his eyes on her face.

They made no promises on their last morning together. He doesn't make contact when he's away. He doesn't tell her when he's coming back. Worst of all, she doesn't ask. There's a strange blockade in her throat that always tamps the words back down inside of her. If he wanted her to know, wouldn't he just tell her?

There's something else, though. Something that only springs up when he's not around. She hates it, that anxious infection in her heart. It's warns her off of him, tells her they're fated to fail each other in one way or another. Their painful past has left its mark, but that's just where the waffling begins. There's also the dismal future they've worked so hard to undo, a bruising shadow that still hovers somewhere in the illusive horizon. Someday...someday it could all catch up to them. The universe could decide to crash and reboot like the archaic technology they were relegated to using in the bunker, rerouting the course that leads to their destruction. Dread trails her every step, every movement. It was careless, diving right back in the way they did. _Reckless_.

For one cheek-warming instant, Lucy thinks he's nudging his foot against her ankle from beneath the table. Her eyes flick to his, but it's Rufus who apologies for kicking her, and Wyatt isn't even paying attention. He's reading something on his phone.

God, she really needs to get out more.

Jiya asks her about Stanford once the next round of drinks arrives, and that question abruptly yanks Wyatt away from his phone.

"It's been okay so far," Lucy answers quietly.

Rufus tilts his head in a gesture that's almost too sympathetic to handle. "That has to be so weird for you, though…"

No one dares to say her name, but Carol Preston might as well be sitting at the table with them now.

Lucy smiles sadly, toying with the stem of her wine glass because her hands need to do something. Anything. "Not sure if it's the right place for me in the long term, but...had to start somewhere, right?"

"You're teaching?"

Wyatt's voice is too loud against the steady background hum of clinking ice and cordial conversation, a jarring blast that makes Lucy squirm. Even louder is the look that passes between Rufus and Jiya. If surprise was an Olympic sport, those two just skated away with the gold medal.

"Uh, yeah. Sort of. I'm just adjunct for this semester because they needed someone to fill in, so it's not really the same as before, but...yeah. Teaching again."

 _Very eloquent response_ , she thinks with an inward eye roll. _No wonder you're only adjunct_.

Now he does look wounded. It only lasts for a second, a zipping flash of disappointment before he replaces it with a congratulatory grin. "Good for you, Lucy."

She shrugs, uncomfortable with all the attention. Like the act of simply rejoining the workforce is supposed to be some sort of accomplishment. "Life goes on, right?"

He watches her intently for a moment that seems to stretch on and on. "Yeah, I guess it does."

Rufus laughs nervously. Jiya's eyes dart from Lucy to Wyatt in quick succession. Someone clangs a pair of glasses together from across the room, startling her into action.

"And on that note, I should go," she says as evenly as she can manage, snatching her purse from the back of her chair and winding a scarf around her neck. "Early class tomorrow. With zombie-eyed freshmen."

There's a chorus of halfhearted commiseration, but the tension remains. Jiya gets up to hug her goodbye and Rufus follows closely behind, which leaves an awkward pause where they all expect Wyatt to stand or speak.

He doesn't.

"All right," Lucy chirps with false brightness. "Don't have too much fun without me. 'Night!"

It takes a hefty dose of restrain to keep from sprinting to the nearest exit. The door is finally in sight, a cluster of gossiping waitstaff all scatter with their varied farewells as she approaches, and Lucy can practically feel the therapeutic blast of fresh air that awaits her, but a firm hand on her elbow stops her up short.

Wyatt's first question is flying before she's even facing him. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You didn't ask."

Lucy almost regrets the pettiness of that involuntary response, but he's pulled that same answer on her before, hasn't he? Fair play as far as she's concerned.

Not so fair to him, based on that stern expression of his. "I didn't know I needed to."

"It's not a big deal," she retorts flatly.

There's a visible swallow rippling at his throat as Wyatt stares at her for several thorny seconds. "Are we okay?"

 _We_. Two letters, so many different meanings.

"We're fine," she assures softly, too exhausted by the assumption of what comes next if she says otherwise. "I wasn't — I didn't deliberately _not_ tell you. You just weren't around when they asked me."

The ugly patterned carpet at his feet has apparently become the most interesting thing in the world. "Right. That makes sense."

"Look, we'll...catch up later, okay?"

"Yeah," he smiles dimly, meeting her eyes for the briefest of moments, "later."

She touches his arm with undue caution. "See you around."

Wyatt nods, staying frighteningly still until she can't see him anymore, out of sight. Never out of mind.

It doesn't strike her until she's staring up at her ceiling an hour later, studiously replaying every nuance of their stilted interaction instead of sleeping. She did the exact same thing with Jonas. Touching his arm, the choice of parting words…

 _See you around_. What the hell was that? What did that really mean, anyway? As much as she dreads it, Lucy will absolutely see Jonas around campus. There's no such guarantee with Wyatt. Not anymore.

* * *

There's a text waiting for her after her last class of the day. He's offering to cook dinner at her place tonight. She accepts without a trace of hesitation, her pulse thundering too fast for the whole drive home.

Tonight. Tonight, she's going to ask what this is, what _they_ are. She feels like an insecure teenager going to battle with herself. What if he's not ready? What if pressing him for clarity drives him away? Is she even ready herself?

Doubtful.

He greets her with a confident smile that bears no resemblance to the ashen expression of last night's conversation at the bar.

Wyatt goes to work at the range in no time at all, sautéing garlic on one burner while he waits for a pot of water to boil on another, asking about her day with an effortless air of distraction.

"It was good," she says a little rigidly, frustrated with herself for being so uptight. It feels off for some reason, playing house like this, falling haphazardly into a domestic routine where Wyatt has a better grasp of where to find pots and pans in her own kitchen than she does. "Normal, I guess."

"And what about the — the leave of absence? Is that the right term?" He begins dumping noodles into a billowing cloud of steam, concentration furrowing his brow. "They were cool about that?"

Lucy makes a noise of confirmation, closely tracking each precise twist of his forearms as he multitasks between burners. "I think I have Denise to thank for the lack of difficulty there. Not to say that a few nosy colleagues haven't tried to sniff out the details, but my ass is covered with the people who really matter."

"Nosy colleagues, huh?"

The replay of taking Jonas down a few pegs has her smiling secretly into her glass of wine. "Yep. No one important."

"Good."

Good that no one important is suspicious of where she's been? Or is it good that Lucy doesn't consider any of her colleagues to be overly important?

She tells her brain to shut the hell up and stop reading what's not there. Wyatt can't be jealous of a man he's never met, never even heard of, and could never…

Could never hold a candle to him.

Shit.

They eat amid drifting small talk. Lucy, admittedly worthless at almost anything kitchen-related, insists on tackling the dishes. It's only right after letting him do all the work up to this point.

Wyatt lasts all of three seconds before he's joining her in clearing the table, offering nothing but a beguiling grin as she tries to shoo him away.

"What?" he laughs knowingly, "I'm just supposed to sit and watch?"

"That's all I did the whole time you were cooking, isn't it?! I uncorked wine, Wyatt. And then started drinking without you, which was really noble of me. It's my turn now."

"Don't sell yourself short. You're very good at uncorking wine."

She snorts out a laugh, elbowing him away from the sink. "Right. It's a real talent, you know."

"For what it's worth, you looked good doing it." He waits a beat, then nudges a hip to hers. "And look even better drinking it..."

The wine, the flirting, the daring proximity...it's all going to her head. His eyes lock on hers as he seems to wait her out, seeking permission or an invitation, or —

Lucy closes her eyes, her body charged with the never-ending sensation of needing more of him in whatever form she can get it. If she's being honest, just watching him prepare dinner has already been a major turn-on. What happens next is a forgone conclusion. "The dishes...they're not going anywhere."

"No," he answers with a smirk she can hear without seeing, "they'll still be here later. Or tomorrow."

A shiver scrapes down her spine. "Tomorrow works for me."

Thank God his breath is as garlicky as hers, or the long kiss that has her bent backward against the counter top might have ended much sooner, though the rapid swell of desire that throbs from beneath his jeans tells her otherwise. He's as far gone as she is...maybe farther.

It isn't until her body is tucked soundly against him, two dark heads nested together on one pillow, that Wyatt confesses the sobering truth. He's leaving again in the morning. _Early_ morning. Like the long-before-the-sun kind of early.

Lucy pretends to already be asleep. That's easier than pretending not to care.

* * *

She's deeply entrenched in a fearfully realistic reverie when the violent buzz of her phone hauls her back to the present. Tomorrow's lecture is on the Cold War, and impossible as it may be from within the cozy warmth of her father's — _step_ -father's — former study, Lucy is sure she'd been sensing the chill of frostbite threatening her fingertips as she flipped between note pages.

For once, she really had to hand it to him. Wyatt's timing couldn't have been better.

 _Plans this weekend?_

Talk about a laughable question. Despite her initial pull toward cynicism, there's an itch of hope within those three words. An offer of something potentially concrete.

 _Let me check my very busy schedule...yep, all clear._

 _Very funny, ma'am. Sure you don't want to double check just in case?_

She speeds through what could easily become several rounds of meaningless banter, cutting to the chase before anticipation can strangle her in its inexorable grasp. _What's happening this weekend?_

 _A little get together with some old friends of mine. Want to join?_

Lucy gawks at the screen in murky disbelief. Old friends? Wyatt never talks about old friends, or friends at all, really. An invitation to meet these people, to tumble headfirst into his world without any prelude…

 _Yeah, count me in._

She hits send before she can free fall into a vortex of doubt, nearly biting her lip raw in the process.

 _Great. I'll pick you up Saturday. See you then._

Her phone doesn't ping again. That's it, no further details provided.

What the hell did she just agree to?

* * *

Laughter slinks through the doorway and dangles in the velvety blanket of twilight, curling in tantalizing wisps around her, but she resists its pull.

Wyatt's friends are nice, if not a little...unfiltered. She smiles to herself, finding unlikely amusement in the idea that Wyatt is one of the more polished guys in the bunch. Wyatt. _Polished_. If she didn't feel so unaccountably glum, Lucy might have been able to laugh at herself for coming up with such a comparison.

Given everything she's seen and heard today, she should be...relieved? Assured? Because 'some old friends' apparently translates into a whole rowdy swarm of military muscle — some active, some honorably discharged, but all more like boys than men as they thump each other's backs and razz one another without pity — and their plus ones. Wives. Girlfriends. Fiancées. A few screaming kids. One adorable drooling baby.

And then there's Lucy. Just...Lucy.

Everyone has been incredibly welcoming, and she's fairly certain she's never had more food shoved in front of her face as she has today, but that hasn't pacified the fizzing bewilderment that churns in her stomach. All of these people have met Jessica, or at least some version of her, right? She's caught more than one woman making a careful inspection of Wyatt's empty ring finger as he ushered Lucy between clusters of people. Are they just being polite? Biding their time until Lucy is well enough out of earshot to speculate where the hell she came from? Because she's — well, she's not…

She doesn't know who she really is, not to him, not to much of anyone. Definitely not to this crowd.

"You okay?"

Lucy glances over her shoulder to find Wyatt propped in the overhang of the breezeway with a beer in hand. Not outside, not inside, but hovering somewhere in the middle. Sounds familiar.

"Yeah, I just needed a little break. Pretty full in there, you know."

Wyatt frowns harshly enough to create some serious lines across his forehead. She feels certain that those same lines didn't exist when she first met him.

"If it's too much for you, we don't have to — "

"No," she interrupts hastily, feeling about two inches tall for making it sound worse than it really is, like she's been warding off a panic attack or something. "It's — it's not _that_. I'm fine, really."

"Did something happen?"

"No. Not like that."

He scans the fading horizon that looms beyond her, adopting a facade of indifference. "Then like _what_ , exactly?"

Lucy steals a long breath, but it does her no good. "What am I doing here?"

His head whips sideways, back to hers. She meets his tremulous gaze head-on despite the wobble of panic that belatedly spirals through her. "It's...I already told you. I've known these guys forever. They said they were bringing other people too, so I thought — "

"Other people, Wyatt?" She tries to smile kindly, but the expression feels brittle on her lips.

His face doesn't change. "Yeah. Other people."

She changes tacks, needing to find a way to make him say it. Him, not her. She's not sure how she's learned to keep a cool head in the midst of canons and knives and explosives, but this — _him_ — still has the power to unnerve her. "Why me? Why _just_ me? If this is one big friendly party of people who know Wyatt Logan, where's Rufus? And Jiya? Did you ask them to come too?"

He blinks down at his beer, lips creeping upward. "No."

"No, you didn't invite them…?"

"No." His blindingly blue eyes probe upward, seering into her with laser focus. "I only asked you."

She crosses her arms, wishing to cinch in every bit of uncertainty that claws at her insides. "And the introductions...they don't feel much like introductions at all. 'This is Lucy.' That's all I've heard you say today, over and over again - 'hey man, this is Lucy.'"

He snickers at her imitation of him, but that doesn't cover the shadow that passes across his face. "Do I really sound like a stoned frat boy to you?"

 _No_ , she answers silently. _You sound like a coward to me_.

"Would you prefer I introduce you as Dr. Preston?" He takes a half-step toward her, then rocks back on his heels in suspended indecision. "Should I throw in a job title? Name drop a book or two?"

She's tempted to steal that beer from him and down it all in one gulp. She hasn't had enough to drink, not for this conversation. There actually might not be enough beer in the state of California to numb herself against this absurd level of deflection.

The moment expands in dreadful silence. Lucy simply shakes her head, resolve crumbling to pieces. "Forget it."

"Forget what?"

"Nothing."

Wyatt scratches at the back of his neck, shoulders bowing inward. "They've all heard about you. They know how we met. It's just putting a face to a name at this point, so that's why — why I don't get into the whole story."

 _The whole story_. Hell, most days she's not even sure what the whole story is, let alone could she even begin to convey that twisted tale to someone else. "You — you told them…?"

"That I worked with you on my last assignment," he provides with a shrug. "Nothing confidential. Just the basics."

"Oh."

"Tell me what I did wrong, Lucy," he prompts in a tone that's officially crossed over into provoking. "Just — just _tell me_."

That's as good as a sledgehammer to her chest. She shakes her head in frustration, incapable of putting her finger on why she's so undone by his razor-sharp request.

He presses closer again, making real progress this time as he abandons his beer on a windowsill and advances across the dusk-laden porch. "Should I have been more upfront with them? Told them we're former time traveling teammates who are struggling to reintegrate into our own world? That we use sex as an outlet but never talk about what's hard — what's real? Should I have admitted that you're the reason I give zero fucks about Jessica's so-called 'mysterious disappearance' or whatever the hell we're supposed to call that? How much sharing is too much sharing, because I have no shitting clue where that line is anymore."

Lucy swallows down a lump of messy, useless tears. The last rays of daylight catch in his glistening eyes, revealing the tortured confusion of so many withheld emotions all erupting at once.

"Or maybe...maybe I should have summarized a little," he continues after an unendurable pause. "Just told them that we're — we're two brokenhearted people...too scared to put a label on how we feel, but… but also too in love to walk away."

That admission burns behind her eyes. "You're scared too?"

"Oh my god, yes," he breathes in a rueful chuckle. "I thought that was painfully obvious by now."

"Wyatt…" she reaches up to slide a hand over his cheek, so goddamn bankrupt on the inside. So in love with him. So unsure of what any of it is supposed to mean after all they've suffered. It should be impossible, shouldn't it? The two of them still standing together despite the ravages of time, the interference of everyone who's wanted them at odds with each other, and violence — so much senseless violence. They've lost so much of themselves on the battlegrounds of war after war after war, and now…? And now, what does she really want from him? "Wyatt."

"I know," he says with a waterlogged smile, tracing her hand with his own. "I know, dammit."

She laughs stupidly. They stand there in flickering solitude as the night dissolves around them. Lucy drags him down to her when she just can't take it anymore, folding herself into the certainty of a kiss, an embrace, the immunity of whiskers and cologne and solid strength.

"I do love you," she whispers when she eventually tucks her face against his neck. "You deserve to hear that. Even if you already know it."

His arms tighten around her. "And I love you."

"Do you...do you ever worry that it won't be enough?"

"Every damn day."

"Okay." She nods into him as the stifling clamp around her heart loosens by a fraction. "Okay, I — that makes me feel better."

He scoffs into her hair, but a smile quickly takes shape against her temple. His hand slides through the cascade of her hair, stopping to squeeze affectionately at the back of her neck. "Me too, actually. I'm up for...for figuring it out. If you want to."

"I want to."

* * *

Her mother's house sells within two day of being on the market. Wyatt insists that this is far from a surprise given the rich history of the neighborhood and the updates that her parents made through the years, but Lucy still has a hard time believing it. Maybe because it's one of her last remaining relics, an enormous monument to the traumatic emotional wounds that are finally starting to scab over.

One of her last Amy memories is at that kitchen island, her sister topping off her wine glass as she ranted about being denied tenure. It's the door Homeland came to so many night ago, asking for her by name, changing her life irrevocably in a few terse sentences. Wyatt told her he was stealing the Lifeboat at the bottom of that stairwell. Her mother spoke the word Rittenhouse out loud for the first time within those four walls.

"You don't have to do this, you know. It's not too late to change your mind."

The bank might not see it that way at this point, but she appreciates what Wyatt is trying to do. Especially since he'd just loaded up an entire U-haul of her family's crap, some headed for a storage unit, some destined for his apartment, but most of which is about to hit the nearest Goodwill.

"I'm not changing my mind," she murmurs as she allows herself to sink into his sideways hug. "I'm just giving it one last look."

He kisses the top of her head, voice subdued. "Take your time, Lucy. There's no rush."

She leans against Wyatt, and Wyatt leans against his truck. Winter hasn't quite moved on, but it won't be long now. She can almost feel the sun on her face despite the very overcast sky hanging above them. Life goes on, right?

There's no crisis, no screeching alarm, no impending bloodshed. It's just them.

 _Take your time, Lucy_.

She can do that now.

This might just be the sweet end of bitter.


End file.
